Bake Shop Changes Hands,

But The Dough Keeps Rising

By Kaaren Valenta

Phillip DiSora and Perry Viselli sold Andrea’s Bake Shop last week, but they don’t intend to retire quite yet.

“We’ll be around for a while to help Tony [Posca]. He has no idea what he has gotten himself into,” Phil DiSora said, smiling wryly at Mr Posca, who was busy preparing trays of cookies to be baked in the Queen Street shop’s large commercial ovens.

Phil and Perry opened Andrea’s Bake Shop in 1981, naming it for Mr DiSora’s youngest daughter, Andrea, now 30, who teaches special education in the Milford public schools. The two men, both of whom grew up in Italy in small towns near Rome, have worked side by side for the past 20 years. Now in their early 60s, they are ready to retire, travel, and maybe do a little fishing.

“I’ve been making cakes for 51 years,” Mr DiSora said, spreading whipped cream frosting on a large strawberry shortcake. “I started working in a bakery in Italy at the age of 12.”

It took Perry Viselli a little longer to get into the bakery business, but once he started he never looked back.

“I was 16 years old when I came to the United States with my father in 1955,” he said. “We went to Scranton, Penn., because my uncle was there. But we couldn’t find work, so we came to Bridgeport. I got a job in a bakery.

“Once you get a job, your life just passes,” he said.

Perry Viselli met Phil DiSora when they both worked at Ann’s, an Italian bakery in Bridgeport. Mr DiSora eventually left to become manager of the bakery in the ShopRite supermarket in Bridgeport, and Mr Viselli wound up there too. When the two men decided to start their own business, the location in Newtown became available.

When they decided to sell two decades later, they started telling friends and soon there were several potential purchasers expressing interest.

“Vin Rigoli, who lives in Newtown, told me about it,” Tony Posca, 39, said. “He was a manager at Grand Union and his family owned the former White Hills grocery store on Route 110 in Shelton. He’s a good friend of my family and he asked me to come and look at [Andrea’s].”

“I was friends with one of his brothers for years,” Mr Posca explained. “We had planned to open a business together but he died.  [Vin Rigoli] was interested in this for his sister-in-law, but she decided not to get involved, so he and I are doing it together. He will be my partner to help me with the books – the business operations.”

Like Andrea’s original owners, Tony Posca has been baking for most of his life.

“I grew up in the Bridgeport, Fairfield, Trumbull area and started out as a pot washer in bakeries,” Mr Posca said. “I was just looking to earn money to pay for gas for my car. Then I did a little more, and finally someone put a pastry bag in my hand. I learned to love it.

“I’ve always loved to cook,” he said. “For instance, I’m so impressed with what you can do with one egg. You can boil it, fry it, and turn it into cookies and cakes. It’s so versatile. That’s what keeps me going.”

Mr Posca worked at Luigi’s, and at Del Prete in Bridgeport for five years, and then he was the night manager for the Montana Bakery, a commercial bakery, before it moved to Brooklyn.

Not wanting to commute into New York, Tony Posca found a job at Lucia Bellos Pastry, an Italian pastry shop in New Haven. Then the opportunity came to own his own bakery.

“I’ve always dreamed about being able to create, to make something that I feel like when I wake up in the morning,” Mr Posca said. “This is a good opportunity.”

All three bakers agreed that there wouldn’t be any changes – at least not at first.

“I eventually would like to offer more Italian pastries, and to expand the hours, but that will happen if I get the right people here to help me,” Mr Posca explained.

Although the bakers at Andrea’s are all Italian, the bakery always has been an international affair. There are Russian, French, Hungarian, and Italian pastries and breads, Jewish Challah bread, and a wide variety of American sweet breads: apple-cinnamon-raisin, apple-raisin, blueberry, apple-cranberry, peach, pineapple.

The bakery’s chocolate mousse cake is a top seller, along with the one of the shop’s most popular cookies, a marzipan crescent. But flaky apple turnovers practically fly out the door, too, as do the freshly filled cannolis. A large replica wedding cake on the front counter reflects the hundreds of wedding cake orders that have been filled.

“Sometimes we make a divorce cake too,” Phil DiSora said, chuckling.

Operations start at the bakery each day at 3 am, when one of the partners arrives. The other starts at 6 am, when the doors open to customers with pots of freshly brewed coffee ready to meet the early arrivals. Andrea’s closes at 2 pm, the shelves bare.

“I’d like to be able to stay open later, for people who want to pick things up on their way home from work, but that is a dream for the future,” Tony Posca said. “[Phil and Perry] know a lot more than I do about this business, but I’m learning already. And I will add my own touches.”

“That’s true,” Perry said. “There aren’t that many left-handed bakers.”

“I told him that left-handed bakers are creators,” Phil added.  

Andrea’s Bake Shop, 5 Queen Street, is open Tuesdays through Saturdays, from 6 am to 2 pm; Sundays, from 6 to 1 pm. For more information call 426-7716.